On 10/1/2021 THE GUARDIAN reported about some bizarre anthroposophic treatments in Germany. About a month before, we had discussed the issue here on this blog. The GUARDIAN article prompted the following press release, dated 12/1/2021, by the ‘International Federation of Anthroposophic Medical Associations’ (oddly abbreviated IVAA):
IVAA welcomes the reporting by The Observer, a sister paper of The Guardian, on the care of Covid-19 patients in German anthroposophic hospitals, including critically ill patients in the intensive care ward. The article rightly highlights how these treatments are provided in addition to state-of-the-art conventional treatments, how anthroposophic medicine is fully integrated into the German health care system and how anthroposophy “enjoys a high level of social acceptance and institutional support in German-speaking countries”. The World Health Organization’s Traditional Medicine Strategy has indeed set integration of traditional and complementary medicine into health care systems as one of its strategic goals.
While the article is generally biased against anthroposophic medicine and only quotes two known opponents of anthroposophy, it nevertheless provides welcome reporting on integrative medicine that is highly popular with patients in Europe.
There are many peer-reviewed studies on anthroposophic medicine and anthroposophic medications have been in use for decades, showing an excellent safety profile. The Observer’s critique that patients should provide consent for such treatments does not hold because the treatments are not experimental, are provided in addition to standard care, based on long clinical experience and in hospitals openly publicizing their integrative medicine approach. As the article reports, German insurance companies pay flat-rate payments for hospital treatment of coronavirus patients; the additional anthroposophic treatments are thus financed out of hospital budgets and are cost-neutral for insurance companies.
Unfortunately, and as correctly reported by The Observer, individual supporters of anthroposophic medicine have sided with demonstrations against corona measures; this does in no way reflect the official position of anthroposophic medicine and IVAA member organizations have clearly distanced themselves.
END OF PRESS RELEASE
One does not need to be a champion in critical thinking to realize that this press release deserves a few comments.
- The claim that anthroposophic medicine (AM) is ‘fully integrated into the German healthcare system‘ is misleading. In Germany, AM belongs to the special therapeutic measures (‘besondere Therapierichtungen’) which indicates almost the opposite of ‘fully integrated’.
- Similarly, AM is not ‘highly accepted’ but belongs to the fringe of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM). There are only very few anthroposophic hospitals in Germany, and most Germans would not even know what AM is.
- The press release claims that ‘there are many peer-reviewed studies on anthroposophic medicine‘. The link it provides leads to an AM organization’s list of references. For infections, this list references the following 9 papers: (1) Martin DD. Fever: Views in Anthroposophic Medicine and their Scientific Validity. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2016;2016(1):13 pages.(2) Soldner G, Stellman HM. Individual Paediatrics: Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Aspects of Diagnosis and Counseling – Anthroposophic-homeopathic Therapy, Fourth edition. 4 edition. CRC Press; 2014. 984 S. (3) Glöckler M, Goebel W. A Guide to Child Health: A Holistic Approach to Raising Healthy Children. Floris Books; 2013. (4) Goebel MW, Michael MK, Glöckler MM. Kindersprechstunde: ein medizinisch-pädagogischer Ratgeber. Verlag Urachhaus; 2016. (5) Szoeke H, Marodi M, Sallay Z, Székely B, Sterner M-G, Hegyi G. Integrative versus Conventional Therapy of Chronic Otitis Media with Effusion and Adenoid Hypertrophy in Children: A Prospective Observational Study. Forsch KomplementärmedizinResearch Complement Med. 2016;23(4):231–239. (6) Hamre HJ, Glockmann A, Schwarz R, Riley DS, Baars EW, Kiene H, u. a. Antibiotic use in children with acute respiratory or ear infections: prospective observational comparison of anthroposophic and conventional treatment under routine primary care conditions. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2014;2014(Article ID 243801). (7) Hamre HJ, Fischer M, Heger M, Riley D, Haidvogl M, Baars E, u. a. Anthroposophic vs. conventional therapy of acute respiratory and ear infections. Wien Klin Wochenschr. 2005;117(7–8):256–268. (8) Hamre HJ, Glockmann A, Fischer M, Riley DS, Baars E, Kiene H. Use and Safety of Anthroposophic Medications for Acute Respiratory and Ear Infections: A Prospective Cohort Study. Drug Target Insights. 14. September 2007;2:209–19. (9) Jeschke E, Lüke C, Ostermann T, Tabali M, Huebner J, Matthes H. Verordnungsverhalten anthroposophisch orientierter Ärzte bei akuten Infektionen der oberen Atemwege. Forsch KomplementärmedizinResearch Complement Med. 2007;14(4):207–215. These are mostly NOT peer-reviewed papers, and none yields anything close to conclusive findings about the alleged efficacy of AM treatments. The truth is that there is no good evidence to support AM.
- The mention that AM remedies have been used for decades is a fallacy (appeal to tradition).
- Yes, AM remedies are safe – mainly because they, like homeopathic remedies, usually contain no active ingredients.
- Patients should provide consent for such treatments to ALL treatments, experimental or not.
- Clinicians practicing AM have long been known to hold an anti-vax attitude which has also caused problems in the past.
My conclusion: this press release was written in true anthroposophic style and spirit: ill-informed, in disregard of medical ethics, based on wishful thinking and aimed at misleading the public.
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yesterday, it was reported that the leadership of a German anthroposophic nursery home is against COVID vaccination and against wearing masks:
https://www.fr.de/frankfurt/gesundheitsamt-in-frankfurt-laedt-heimleiter-vor-90178219.html?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1611338004
Even after years of following all that is quackery and pseudoscience with a mixture of both interest and horror, I am still appalled by people like this. The overwhelming question here is WHY?
When, as in this case, clients have a very high risk of serious complications, suffering and death, then anyone with even two functional brain cells(*) would welcome ANY means of preventing or lowering this risk, regardless whether it fits in their own personal world view or not. Why on earth would one try dissuade people from receiving preventive care that has over 200 years of proven efficacy? Why would anyone advise against simple face masks if even common sense tells you that these will prevent the spreading of infectious respiratory droplets?
What reasons does this person have to take such egregious risks with other people’s lives? Is he afraid that those elderly will incur developmental retardation in some way? Or that running a high risk of getting seriously ill and dying is somehow even beneficial for these people?
It truly boggles the mind.
*: Disclaimer: I am not a neurologist, so take this with a grain of salt (or Natrium Muriaticum C30 for gullible).
what always amazes me is how these people manage to get such a following in the first place.
It was pretty obvious that Steiner was out of his tree from the beginning – but that even now people still believe in his fantasies is beyond bizarre.
It seems to be this desperate “need to believe” at all costs regardless of any evidence to the contrary – an almost perverse persecution complex like the followers of Donald Trump.
Homeopaths and conspiracy theorists display the same tendencies.
for many, it’s a religion
I was under the impression that informed consent includes information about proven efficacy (or at least the plausibility thereof) – patients should absolutely know if the treatment they are about to receive actually works.
This alone seems completely absent in the case of anthroposophic treatments.
true!
It’s also completely absent in terms of the vaccines. Actually, there is a reverse correlation, showing that they make matters worse, if one looks at the data.
So anthroposophy is preferable to me, because it at least starts with the dictum ‘Do no harm’.
Eh?
You’ve been holding the graph upside down, Tareau. Unless, of course, you have some evidence to support your assertion.
@Saint Tareau
Um, nope. I found the invitations for my Covid-19 vaccines excellent in terms of information: they explained exactly what I could expect from vaccination, both the benefits (vastly reduced chance of getting seriously ill) and the drawbacks (minor side effects such as pain at the injection site and perhaps a little malaise due to the immune response). And oh, it was all explained in plain language, so that almost everyone could easily understand it.
Covid-19 vaccination makes people more ill than getting the disease itself? Sorry, but you are quite wrong here. Covid-19 has killed millions of people worldwide. Covid-19 vaccines may have killed a few dozen – mostly very weak, elderly people who almost certainly would not have survived the infection itself.
And what data would that be? The sort of data that emanates from the rear end of male bovines, by any chance?
I’d rather say that you just convincingly demonstrated one of the more serious harms of anthroposophy: antivaccine lies.
Unrelated but in the same vein, a friend just sent me this article where the NYT is admitting that the PCR test for Covid is specious since the number of cycles are so high that there are a very high percentage of false positives. Another form of religion at work. I guess we all pick our favored religion.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html?ref=oembed
can you try to make some sense and learn proper English, please?
That post has Nothing wrong or lacking in sense. Clear the fog from your glasses and brain.
I’m afraid there is quite a lot wrong with the English in that post, Roger.
@Roger
Then please don’t pollute this blog item with it. But feel free to return once you figured out how to frame PCR-testing (flawed or not) in the context of anthroposophic ‘care’.
@ Roger
the NYT article is simplistic – and I imagine that you know less than nothing about PCR tests yourself.
In fact it is not possible to talk about ct values as if they were some absolute value that is invariable. It’s a bit more involved but…….basically they vary depending upon the equipment used in a particular lab and other variables and need to be set locally to have any strict meaning. Arguing about whether a cut-off at 35 or 40 or whatever means a particular “thing” is a little like arguing about fairies dancing on the head of a pin unless everyone is using the same “calibrations” for want of a better word.
However to compare the tried and tested science behind PCR testing to a religion such as homeopathy is quite a stretch – even for someone with as ossified a cranium as poor Roger.
As the NYT article has obviously confused you I hesitate to attempt to clarify further for fear that additional scientific information may only lead to additional confusion and make the situation worse.
Suffice it to say that scientific testing is often a complicated matter and the results require careful interpretation. This is often the issue with the scatter-gun approach of alt-med lab testing where the general rule seems to be to request anything and everything including the serum rhubarb in the hope that something will turn up.
Unfortunately something usually does – but the fact that it is nearly always irrelevant doesn’t stop the alties from treating the hell out of it with useless and sometimes dangerous “therapies” often at great financial cost.
The quack clinics treating very dubious “Lyme” results and similar tests are one example of this very dubious trend.
Anyway Roger – you should know better than to believe anything that you read in a newspaper surely?
@ Roger
“the NYT is admitting that the PCR test for Covid is specious since the number of cycles are so high that there are a very high percentage of false positives.”
PS – I omitted to point out the most important point at the beginning – which is that you totally misinterpreted the article anyway!
It is NOT saying that the PCR tests are false positives – your reading comprehension as per usual is ZERO.
Kindly try reading the article again – try very slowly one word at a time……
What it is trying to say – for the slow witted – is that because the PCR test is detecting the presence of virus it is capable of detecting people who have the virus whether they have a heavy load or a very low load. It is one of the great qualities of the PCR that it is capable of detecting very low levels of genetic material.
However this means that a postitive test (note a TRUE positive still) may mean though that the person is no longer still infectious but there is no way of knowing just from the test alone. It is reported as positive or negative.
So these results are NOT false positive or specious results. These are still people who have Covid – they are just in the recovery phase and MAY no longer be contagious – it is just not possible to be certain.
That is a very different state of affairs from what you are alleging – and not at all what the article states.
Please do try harder to actually read the article before you spout nonsense.
My earlier comments about ct values of course still stand.
I suppose we all ought to be glad that you have wound up somewhere harmless like homeopathy – and that you are not in some other occupation like air-traffic control or driving a bus or something.
At least we can be reasonably certain that you can only cause harm by omission. I shudder to think of the harm that could be incurred if your occupation relied upon you actually having to ingest information from a sheet of instructions, or upon your having to understand a simple algorithm. The ensuing chaos doesn’t bear thinking about.
At least in your present role if you mix-up nux vomica with arsenicum album then nobody will be any the wiser and no harm will be done.
QFT. But this is Roger, so nothing he won’t misconstrue to justify his malicious sh*t-smearing. In this case, a five month-old article that doesn’t say quite what he thinks it is; not that we expect Roger to do nuance, or even basic honesty.
The key issue here is what is actually meant by “false positive”.
The COVID deniers interpret it as meaning PCR testing is defective and worthless: wrongly reporting a positive match in people who don’t have COVID and never have. But like most things in science, what it means is: it’s a bit more complicated than that.
It all depends on what the question is you’re looking to answer, because at 40 cycles a simple YES/NO response won’t tell you if someone currently has COVID or previously had COVID; it replies YES in either case. That YES/NO answer may be useful if you’re looking to gauge how much of the population has been exposed; not helpful for identifying who needs to self-isolate for the next two weeks.
However, it occurs to me that over-sensitive testing wouldn’t have mattered early on anyway, since the great majority of infections being detected back then were current, or very recent. Remember too, these tests are mostly being requested by individuals who strongly suspect they’ve just been exposed to COVID for the first time, and are looking to have that suspicion confirmed/allayed†.
Now that we’re a year into the pandemic, there’s more of a need to differentiate between those who had it just last week and those who had it six months ago. Since that NYT article was published, the US has been moving to 30 cycles, which better distinguishes between high viral load (currently infected) and low (previously had it but recovered now). Of course, the same peanut gallery that was previously crying “false positives” to imply PCR testing is defective (it’s not) is now screeching that reducing sensitivity is a malicious move to disguise the true numbers of those now infected. Whereas it’s just science being science: learning by doing, and iteratively improving its initial rough-n-ready processes to produce more valuable results.
Not that I expect bad-faith actors like Roger to acknowledge any of this, because improving the science was never their agenda. They’ve got their simplistic deceptive slogans to hoot across the rooftops, and that’s all they ever care about.
—
(†Nor do I expect Roger to understand the difference between a self-selecting cohort and the general population, given that most of homeopathy’s historical success stories depend on willfully confusing one for the other, even after it’s been patiently explained to them why that single difference changes absolutely everything.)
All medical tests have inaccuracies and will sometimes produce false positives and false negatives. Very often the people designing the test or specifying how it is to be used (for a specific purpose) will make adjustments to cut-off points in order to favour one over the other. For instance a screening test for cancer will be expected to produce plenty of false positives but to minimise the number of false negatives.
However, to consider false positives in the context of the pandemic is to ask the wrong question. The false positive rate is the chance of a positive test given that the individual being tested does not have the infection. However, what that person actually wants to know is what is the chance that they have the infection given that they have a positive test. This is not the same thing at all and is usually a completely different number.
Just to reiterate:
The probability of A given B is not the same as the probability of B given A. The chance of a random person being pregnant if we know they are female is not the same as the chance of them being female if we know they are pregnant.
What you are actually interested in is called the positive predictive value, and this not only depends on the accuracy of the test, but crucially on the prevalence of the thing being tested for within the population being tested. I don’t want to go into the mathematical details here as I don’t think I could explain it clearly without diagrams, but any elementary textbook in medical statistics will explain it properly. Here is is on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_and_negative_predictive_values
Essentially it is the same question that juries often get wrong when they are considering DNA evidence. The prosecuting attorney will say something like:
“Only one person in a million in the USA has a match to the DNA found on the victim’s body. The defendent has such as match, therefore it is a million to one against that he did it and you must convict him”.
It only takes a moment’s thought to realise that, with a population of 300 million, there will be 300 other people in the USA whose DNA also matches what was found on the victim. This narrows it down quite a bit but you still need to consider whether any of the other 300 could be the guilty one.
In the last 7 days in Australia about 46000 tests per day have been carried out on average, for a total of about 320000 tests in 7 days.
In that time, there have been 60 cases identified. Of those, 60 were identified as being for cases originating overseas (and probably almost all in people in quarantine), and 0 as being locally contracted.
So, if PCR is giving “a very high percentage of false positives”, how is it that there are only 60 positives out of 320000 tests? Even if they were all false positives (which seems to me to be very unlikely), that’s a false positive rate of 0.02% (which seems very good to me, and the actual value is probably considerably lower).
And if they are all false positives, how is it that they are all for cases acquired outside Australia, and there are no reported locally acquired cases in the period, when the overwhelming number of tests are for people not in immigration quarantine?
I’m sure the silliness of the “very high percentage of false positives” can be shown by looking at the tests vs identified cases statistics for any jurisdiction with low spread of COVID-19, but where there is still a high rate of testing.
While we’re about it, perhaps Roger could put a number alongside “very high percentage” and a reference to the source, as is suggested in the red bar at the top of the forum pages.
My numbers are from: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-17/coronavirus-cases-data-reveals-how-covid-19-spreads-in-australia/12060704 (For the week ending 24 Jan. A small amount of simple arithmetic is needed to derive some of the numbers.)
I would be interested to know the thoughts of the participants here on this subject.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/mrna-covid-19-vaccines-are-really-gene-therapy-and-not-vaccines-ethicist
I was reading about the mRNA approach to the creation of the Covid-19 vaccines. Even though the science is not exactly new, it appears that it is in question as to whether or not the science qualifies in meeting the historic vaccine definition.
There also appears to be safety questions that have not been addressed sufficiently. Gene therapy for this type of treatment is bordering on unethical, and quite possibly dangerous to the patient.
“But Martin countered that it is “not at all” like a vaccine, since “a vaccine is supposed to trigger immunity. It’s not supposed to trigger you to make a toxin.”
“It’s not somewhat different. It’s not the same at all,” Martin explained. “It’s a means by which your body is conscripted to make the toxin that then allegedly your body somehow gets used to dealing with, but unlike a vaccine, which is to trigger the immune response, this is to trigger the creation of the toxin.”
To dive in deeper;
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/01/11/rna-vaccines-and-their-lipids
“But all that engineering availeth one not if the mRNA doesn’t make it to the cells and inside the cells. And that takes us to the formulations, which are another essential part of the whole mRNA vaccine story. Cell and molecular biologists tend to think of RNA molecules in general as pretty fragile things, and that reputation has been earned. They’re intrinsically less stable than the corresponding DNA molecules, and the odds are further stacked against them in the body by our own immune system’s defenses against foreign RNAs from pathogens like the current coronavirus. Just for starters, there are plenty of “RNA-ase” enzymes out there ready to tear any wandering RNAs to bits – the body can use circulating RNA molecules as signals, but these things are under tight control. So if you just inject a naked RNA sequence into someone’s blood, it’ll get stripped down to nothing before it’s traveled very far.”
All responses welcome
Thank you
@ Listener
where to start?????
I really do not have the energy to refute all of this point by point – it’s so bad it’s not even wrong!
This guy is not a scientist or a doctor – he is a BUSINESS ADMINISTRATOR.
Just about every single thing he says is totally absurd and completely wrong. The man in an idiot.
“mRNA is gene therapy” – no it’s not! mRNA transfers the instructions stored in DNA to make the proteins required in every living cell. mRNA help the body make its own missing or defective protein – or in this case the antigen required for a vaccine. Unlike gene editing and gene therapy, mRNA technology does not change the genetic information of the cell, and is intended to be short-acting.
” (WHO) correctly distinguished SARS-CoV-2 as a virus and COVID-19 as a set of clinical symptoms, but that confusion has arisen from a false “causal link” made by the media, reporting that SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID-19.”
This is just a modern version of HIV / AIDS denialism. Of course SARS-CoV-2 causes Covid-19 – what the bloody hell does he think all these people have been dying of?
From the WHO “Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus – SARS-CoV-2.” But of course they should have asked a Business Administrator first!
“COVID-19 is not a disease. It is a series of clinical symptoms. It is a giant umbrella of things associated with what used to be associated with influenza and with other febrile diseases,” as above – total and utter nonsense – by definition.
“After establishing reliability problems of PCR testing and the conflation of SARS-CoV-2 with COVID-19, Martin explained why he thinks mRNA vaccines are falsely called vaccines, and that they work more like gene therapy.”
The reporter here is entirely credulous – I can only imagine that they enlisted a kindergartner to do the interview – because they are swallowing in its entirety all the complete nonsense and lies and rank pseudoscience this guy is spouting.
He has NOT established any issues with PCR, he is totally wrong about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, and by definition he is also wrong in calling mRNA vaccines “gene therapy. He is talking pure gobbledygook.
He totally misrepresents and misunderstands the concept of mRNA vaccines when he says “This is not only not keeping you from getting sick, it’s making your body produce the thing that makes you sick,” Martin added.
The messenger part of the mRNA only makes your body produce a copy of the “spike” protein found on the surface of the coronavirus – this in itself is completely harmless.
It is exactly the same idea as giving attenuated or other form of inactive viral protein vaccination as is commonly done for other diseases. This “spike” is the antigen (just as the attenuated virus would be the antigen) which provokes the body to produce anti-bodies.
But the “spike” on it’s own is HARMLESS! That is the point. A point the gormless Mr Martin is too full of his own importance to grasp.
The mRNA having done its job is eventually destroyed and disappears.
“They (pharmaceutical companies) said they could not test for the existence or absence of the virus” – god knows where he got this from – I imagine most of Big Pharma have heard of PCR tests by now.
“The companies themselves have admitted to every single thing I’m saying, but they are using the public manipulation of the word vaccine to co-opt the public into believing they’re getting a thing which they are not getting.”
If he really believes this to be true I think there is a padded cell and a syringe full of a nice anti-psychotic waiting for him somewhere. Can he produce one iota of evidence to show these companies are admitting to any of this howling at the moon lunacy that he is spouting here?
“Instead, Martin warns that an mRNA injection “is not going to stop you from getting coronavirus. It’s not going to stop you from getting sick. In fact, on the contrary, it will make you sick far more often than the virus itself.”
He just gets EVERYTHING THE WRONG WAY ROUND. How can anyone be so wrong? And so certain that they are right?
“Martin presented data confirming his claim, noting that after receiving their second shot of the jab, “80 percent of people had one or more clinical presentations of COVID-19,” whereas “80 percent of people who have an infection according to RT-PCR have no symptoms at all.”
Ah – the 80/ 80 rule – always very suspicious. Where is this data and where did he get it from? Because it’s bound to be as reliable as the rest of his ravings and I imagine he found them scribbled on the back of an envelope in the gent’s toilets somewhere.
“will get COVID-19 symptoms from getting the gene therapy passed off as a vaccine. You will get COVID symptoms from that 80 percent of the time.”
So on the one hand he is claiming that there is NO link between the virus and Covid. Yet now he is claiming that if you get injected with mRNA making you produce the viral toxins you WILL get Covid! Ignoring of course the fact that he doesn’t understand at all that the mRNA is only instructing your body to produce the antigenic “spike” protein part of the coronavirus – which in itself is totally harmless.
THERE IS NO WAY THAT THE mRNA VACCINE CAN GIVE YOU COVID. It is of course possible for people to get mild symptoms post-vaccination – sore arm, mild fever, flu-like symptoms etc which are in fact a sign that the vaccine is working – but NOT a sign of developing a coronavirus infection!
“A human being is going to be potentially exposed to unclassified, both short-term and long-term, risks of altering their RNA and DNA from exposure to this gene therapy,”
This guy does not understand this science. mRNA CANNOT CHANGE YOUR GENETIC MAKE-UP. PERIOD!
It just does not have this capacity. It contains a very restricted set of instructions – like a short piece of computer code. These instructions are to tell your body to go make some coronavirus “spike” protein – which your body will then (hopefully) recognize as a “foreign material” = antigen and then produce antibodies against it – just as it would if you had been injected with an attenuated virus or a viral protein in a traditional vaccine.
Granted it is a novel way of dong vaccines but it has been shown to be remarkably effective.
But it is simply NOT gene therapy. And is simply CANNOT permanently change your DNA – that is scientifically impossible because of the way that mRNA and DNA works.
This is just basic biology. It is just basic scientific fact. We know it in the same way that we know the earth isn’t flat. If the earth were flat all the damn cats would have pushed everything off the edge by now.
“we are being told to take a treatment for a disease we don’t have and most likely will not have.”
So he’s basically just a Covid-denier!
In any case the main aim of a vaccine is to give it to people BEFORE they get the disease in order to PREVENT them acquiring it.
“There’s nothing about taking a PCR test that does anything other than reinforce a propaganda narrative. It doesn’t tell you anything.” He knows as much about PCR tests as he does about everything else.
Eager to demonstrate that the entire COVID-19 vaccination program is a farce, Martin explained that “if you lift the state of emergency, the whole house of cards falls.”
This guy is deep into conspiracy la-la-land.
I am not sure what you would like me to say about the second article. It is attempting to discuss some of the complexities of using mRNA technology as a vaccine vehicle. It is not intended for the completely lay audience. There are many insightful comments underneath – and there are still many questions for which there are no definite answers to do with various aspects of using this technology in different ways and the possible issues with that and the unknown quantities. This is heady stuff and I have no inclination to attempt to try to explain it in any clearer language than it already is or to get involved in any of the controversies – beyond which much is still unknown and will be for a long time to come. I think it you want answers to these questions what you need is a time machine.
What is clear is that mRNA technology has been cleverly re-purposed to provide us with vaccines against Covid-19 at very short notice. These have passed various regulatory bodies’ stringent safety evaluations and use in test subjects. mRNA has been known about as a vehicle for therapeutic use for decades – and the stumbling block has always been that it is so fragile and liable to be destroyed in the host so rapidly that it was all but abandoned.
These new ingenious methods to enable it to survive for long enough to perform its task are obviously a massive step forwards – but it is still a temporary phenomenon and it will be destroyed in the host quite quickly. But by then it will hopefully have done its job of giving instructions to manufacture the “spike” protein.
(obviously I am grossly over-simplifying the whole process here by then this isn’t a PhD thesis.)
It cannot permanently alter DNA so no permanent changes will be made – beyond hopefully the stimulation of anti-bodies to the spike protein. But this “message” will have been a “one-off” phenomenon and will not be repeated unless the host gets a repeat vaccine.
But it is a million miles from “gene-therapy” which looks to change the host’s DNA permanently. Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with that if it is for a good purpose and the host has given informed consent.
In the interim the world would be best served if “lifesitenews” were to close down permanently and Mr Martin were to take a vow of permanent silence.
Thank you Mr Travis for taking the time to address that preceding post so comprehensively. When I read it, I had that uneasy head-scratching feeling, “Is this gobbledeygook, or is it me?”
A previous occasion when that occurred was when, years ago, I foolishly bought, from a Bargain Books group who came round the college where I worked, a copy of Ms Gillian McKieth’s “You Are What You Eat”. This was before her lack of medical qualifications was exposed. Eventually I chucked it out.
I’m older and even more curmudgeonly now, and increasingly ready to believe, when a similar question arises over a piece of writing, that indeed it’s gobbledeygook, it’s not me (unless it’s mathematical, upon which I can proffer no opinion as I don’t have a maths brain).
It is remarkable how quickly some seem to buy into the idea that all researchers in all universities and pharmaceutical companies are either simpletons or evil deceivers, or both. (Cororllary to which, some individual somewhere of very little relevant experience/qualification, is the maverick genius who gets it all right).
We can see that the only idiot here is you, spewing pseudo-information you gathered from pharmas’ claims rooted in no evidence. Stop reading media to copy paste around their idiocies. Everything you tried to discredit has actually been proven thousands over by the top world’s scientists.
With what you wrote, you have compared yourself to leading scientists in immunology, virology and epidemiology and biology, and even suggested you are better qualified than them! Who the hell are you, actually? A paid astroturfer copying/pasting rubbish to discredit qualified people. Get. Lost.
thank you for your kind comments!
“proven thousands over by the top world’s scientists”
please show me what you consider the most conclusive proof.
THANKS AGAIN
And who might these scientists be, then?
@ Jade
is that your best shot? really?
what a semi-coherent rant of barely literate rambling drivel! An ad hominem containing no facts or counter-arguments just the bog-standard insults of someone who has no case to make. What a truly pathetic little troll you are!
I gave a point-by-point rebuttal of this guy Martin’s completely fact-free scientifically illiterate litany of lies – and this is all you can come up with? You couldn’t even come up with an original insult but had to resort to the typical dross that alt-med luvvies always mindlessly trot out as a reflex. You really are a joke.
Scientific differences are intended to be resolved by intelligent debate –
I challenge you to point to a SINGLE point I made which is false – scientific references to a publication in a well-established peer-reviewed journal only will count.
I do not believe there was a single comment made by Mr Martin that was actually true – he quite evidently know nothing about science, Covid-19 or PCR testing – or much of anything else. If you agree with him you are agreeing to being equally as abysmally ignorant.
“Everything you tried to discredit has actually been proven thousands over by the top world’s scientists.”
Really? Please be so kind as to name half a dozen of these “thousands” of “top” scientists – and point me to the references that will prove me so terribly wrong.
You are just a simple-minded troll and you will be quite unable to name six of your so-called “thousands” – an empty boast from an empty headed silly little girl making fatuous claims.
Where exactly did I compare myself to anyone else? Where exactly did I claim to be better qualified that anyone else?
May I suggest that you try learning to read a little better?
If you had been able to read you would have learned that my piece was a criticism of Mr Martin’s woeful ignorance and ill-informed spewing of misinformation – I don’t see where I criticized or impugned the qualifications of the world’s scientific community so perhaps you would like to try to point that out?
Nobody is paying me so your accusation is a bald-faced lie. Everything I wrote is an original composition – not copied and pasted – yet another bald-faced lie.
Would you like to attempt to demonstrate where I tried to discredit qualified people? The only possible claimant would be Mr Martin and his own words condemned himself as an utterly unqualified, pompous, arrogant, ill-informed, conspiracy prone, empty-headed moron who believes in all manner of
totally daft things.
He doesn’t understand that SARS-CoV-2 causes Covid-19 as per the WHO and everybody else’s definition – do you disagree with me and the WHO and the CDC and every other regulatory agency on this too? ergo he is a Covid-19 denier just like HIV deniers.
https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/coronavirus-disease-covid-19
He stupidly believes that mRNA vaccines are in fact gene therapy which displays an absolutely awesome ignorance of basic biology.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2021/01/11/covid-19-vaccines-cant-alter-your-dna-heres-why/
Do you still agree with him? If so you are also admitting to prodigious ignorance and stupidity because that notion is just WRONG! Facts don’t change just because you stamp your feet and have an infantile tantrum about them. I can back up everything I said with authoritative references – and they are all FACTS.
I have no idea where you acquired your world view but it is distinctly warped and I challenge you to back any of it up with any AUTHORITATIVE references (please note Fox News, whale-to, joe mercola etc are all disqualified.)
May I respectfully suggest that you try growing up?
thank you for your patience – I’m not sure he deserves it.